CITYist

Doing a blog boils down to writing about stuff I like,” says Susanna Lau, aka Susie Bubble, in a characteristically self-deprecating way. “Really, it’s not a complicated process.” Yet, Lau’s fashion and style blog, Style Bubble (stylebubble.typepad.com), is incredibly influential, and with it, its authoress has become something of a global phenomenon, garnering hundreds of thousands of fans (she gets nearly 12,000 hits every day) not to mention some serious attention from the fashion industry. Recently, London’s leading arts and lifestyle magazine Dazed and Confused appointed Lau the commissioning fashion editor for Dazed Digital; one would be tempted to add “at the mere age of 24” but Lau informs me that there is now a 12-year-old blogger called Tavi, taking America by storm, giving rise to speculation over her precocious ways.

It is no wonder Lau is making waves — or bubbles — for her Style Bubble is a genre upon itself, and makes for rather addictive reading. The thing that hits you first is Lau’s positive outburst of joy over dressing up and wearing clothes (joie de s’habiller, anyone?) — her own take on British street-wise eclecticism is well documented in a diary-like “what I ACTUALLY wear under the cold harsh glare of daylight and the dull moonlight that falls.” This is Lau, the self-stylist that merges with Lau the fashion blogger, who also fulfills the usual blog “duties” — she is generous with tips and advice to fellow fashionistas, extremely disciplined and well-informed, and a thorough researcher with a keen and fresh editorial eye. Many a fashion journalist and curator now regularly check her blog to find the latest on what’s worth watching out for.

But you’re in for so much more than that with Style Bubble, the blog that “started as an escape.” Lau serves up fashion with attitude in spades, surprise and quirkiness, writing brilliantly and with remarkable ease. I guess you would, blogging your way though the light and dark hours (usually the dark ones) of every single day for over two years now. A not-entirely-untypical entry, courtesy of Lau, would read like this: “People in the office have been banging on about the FTSE 100 falling faster than a pair of baggy hip hop jeans sans belt. Banks [are] being bailed by governments and it has gotten to the point where most people with an ounce of social awareness shouldn’t really ignore. Excepting of course the group of dreamers that are fashion designers. Or perhaps they are aware but instead of confirming, they’d rather react. So for SS ‘09 we have a SLEW of back-to-nature designs.  If the stuff that man has built up is crumbling down, why not turn to the stuff that was there in the first place?”

It’s Lau’s wit that can turn you into an instant fan, whether she is being dryly sarcastic or silly, or even better, occupying one of those less probable positions between the four humors, say, melancholic-meets-deadpan. Eh? Ok, enter Lau’s online biography where she writes, “I had two hamsters named Bobble and Bubble after the arcade game — they ended up killing each other though and when they died, I buried one under the apple tree and the other under the pear tree — I thought they’d be happier by themselves.”
Despite content growing mushroom-like, Lau faithfully keeps to the genre of the blog, DIY and all. She doesn’t produce editorial shoots and isn’t much interested in expanding into any form of online fashion magazine, although she does have words of admiration for those who have done this well. For Lau, the enjoyment of blogging is about creating a dialogue through writing, and through posting her choice of fashion-related images that may be self-made or borrowed from others.

At a time when fashion blogging has become obligatory stuff for the obsessive fashion shopper, let alone the fashion magazine, there are still a few things that make Lau stick above of the fashion blog-pack. One of them is the sheer scope of themes and subjects she navigates through — from her own consumer passions, designer collections, sample sales and recent fashion magazine imagery, to under-exposed fashion designers, exhibitions, shops, music, TV programs or films featuring worthy fashion or costume scenes. “To me, all these areas naturally converge. When you look at style.com, it’s all catwalk and celebs. To see fashion from that point of view is so, so unrewarding,” she says.

Lau’s approach to blogging as a form of cultural commentary on fashion brings her into the league of another fashion uber-blog, “A Shaded View on Fashion” (ashadedviewonfashion.com), which she lists as an inspiration, and whose Paris-based author, Diane Pernet, she considers “the grandma of fashion blogging.” With Pernet, Lau also shares the ethos of her journalistic integrity, resisting the pressure to give undue exposure to brands that have begun to court her. Over the past year, super-brands such as Gucci and Chanel have flown Lau to exclusive events, with an unspoken expectation she would promote their product in return. “I always let people know when I am being taken on a trip, and I do report on it but in my own way, as my own experience.” She adds, “But this in itself is testament to just how far blogging has come. Even a couple of years ago no one would have thought this could happen!”

The striking thing about Lau is that every so often she chips in with insightful self-reflections about herself and her role within the industry, possibly to take the wind out of her critics’ sails, but more likely the result of a professional deformation — until Dazed plucked her, Lau’s day job was in digital marketing. “I am personally fascinated by blogging as a phenomenon because it adds a different strand to the media that cover fashion. People still wonder whether blogging is a legitimate form of journalism because it’s self-published. But the presence of a strong personal voice means that this voice can now engage with a specific audience — not necessarily a big one — but one that brands want to tap into,” she says. Her way of summing up the recent blog-explosion? “It seems we now live in a voyeuristic generation where everyone can reveal just about anything about themselves . . . .” Oh, just log on!